Fashion designer Valentino Garavani arrives for the 2012 New York City Ballet Fall Gala at the Lincoln Center in New York September 20, 2012. This year's event celebrated fashion designer Valentino Garavani. (Photo : Reuters)

Valentino Garavani was the man behind designing all the costumes for the ballet dancers at this year's New York City Ballet Gala that took place Thursday

The most awaited New York City Ballet gala was a star studded event and a Valentino paradise. As the dancers took the stage at Lincoln Center for this year's fall gala Thursday night, they were all wearing extraordinary costumes by Valentino.

Valentino Garavani is arguably fashion's most celebrated designers who retired nearly four years ago, leaving the design house he founded in 1960. But, he says, retirement wasn't ever going to be spent enjoying the views from his half-dozen homes around the world. His desire to put pencil to paper and sketch artful things never diminished, he says, but churning out collection after collection did.

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"I stopped because in the 'fashion world,' I had done almost everything, and fashion was taking a direction I didn't like," Valentino, now 80, says. "... This is a new life for me, and it's been a very beautiful experience."

Valentino says he's a great fan of the ballet, and he has found working with the lovely music and eager dancers to be inspiring. It also helped that costumers were available to make everything perfect, just like it should be for what is essentially haute couture, he adds with a smile.

"I am doing this with great pleasure." he says. "I have nothing to regret in my career, and I love my colleagues and peers, but I don't pay attention to 'fashion' anymore," Valentino says.

Last year marked the launch of the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum, a downloadable app with real-time, 3-D views of hundreds of his dresses and even more of his sketches, ads, photos and videos. Giammetti, the business-focused, big-picture half of the duo, headed up this project since Valentino is the first to say he's not an aficionado of high-tech gadgets."I am the worst thing for anything mechanical or on the computer. Last evening, something was wrong with the TV," he says. "I had to turn it off because I didn't know what else to do."